D.A. Tuma: Bring Peace to the Process

Jul 25, 2000

About 100 people gathered at the Stanislaus County Agricultural Center on July 19, 2000 to participate in a workshop hosted by the staff of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Central Valley Region (RWQCB). The RWQCB staff introduced presentations by staff of other government agencies that have programs related to the RWQCB proposed action to improve water quality in the Lower San Joaquin River (LSJR) as measured by salt and boron concentrations.

This was the second of three workshops the RWQCB scheduled "Éto gather input from the public on alternative Regional Board control actions that would
improve salinity and boron levels in the LSJR from Mendota Dam to Vernalis," according to a May 26 notice signed by Harley H. Davis, Agricultural Regulatory and Planning Unit. The third workshop is scheduled for August 16 at the same location.

The workshop concluded with an audience evaluation of the workshop itself. Someone asked if there were similar programs elsewhere in California. Dennis Westcot, RWQCB Program Manager, offered that the Santa Anna watershed (Anaheim and vicinity) had a brine line. I offered, "Not in California, but in southern Arizona, there was a drainage problem. They didn't have a brine line, but they did have a brine channel that bypassed the Mexican diversion of the Colorado River. Just an idea."

Of course it is a politically incorrect idea. People aren't supposed to divert rivers in the New Age religion of Environmentalism. If there were no diversions, it follows there would be no need for bypass channels, or people for that matter. So the idea of a bypass channel, such as the politically plugged San Luis Drain, is heresy.

Instead of market solutions that could let property owners build infrastructure for drainage, we are now constrained to dance around while crossing our legs, waiting for government to give us permission to pee. But permission might never be granted. An RWQCB staffer told the audience that the RWQCB has authority to prohibit discharge. He claimed the authority came from the State Water Resources Control Board. He also claimed that CALFED was their bank. Obviously, his idea about where his authority and funds come from is disconnected from tax-paying voters.

But perhaps in our socialist infatuation with democracy, a majority of tax-paying voters are now fooled into thinking they don't pay taxes. Government of the people, by the people, for the people has succumbed to mob rule more swayed by the media bias alleged in Noam Chomsky's "Manufactured Consent" to redistribute wealth via government force rather than create wealth by sharing surplus private property via voluntary trade.

All voters are taxpayers whether they know it or not. Just because they may be subsidized with more government loot than is taken from them, doesn't mean they have a net gain in wealth compared to what they would have without the friction loss of government expense, mismanagement, and suppressed creativity.

All voters eat. Most wear clothes of cotton. Except for a few hermits, we all pay more for all consumer goods to pay the producers who pay more for government delivery of water and power as directed by the infamous Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 to finance a slush "restoration fund" to subsidize biologists playing god with wildlife habitat. That's nearly half of the funding for CALFED.

The other half of CALFED funding comes from bonds we voters authorized the State to trade for loans to be repaid by taxes on our children's wealth. We borrow our children's wealth to pay for the whims of self-serving, self proclaimed defenders of wildlife. Our children could be wealthier than us and more easily able to afford whatever habitat stewardship they might choose, but for government usurpation of their choices. Today's priests of environmentalism deign to know better what wildness our children should protect and presume to garnish their future wages to pay for today's environmental protection crusade.

We are idiots to let such fakes fleece our future. Only by the luck of our time between catastrophic calamities have we not yet perished from the earth. Providence may have been kind. But we should not press our luck by ignoring evidence of real danger while inflating our egos with the arrogance that people are earth's only hazard. All the wealth in the world, all the wild habitat in the world, won't mean a thing when the next asteroid or comet punches a hole in the earth's crust.

The wealthiest princes of preindustrial society were paupers compared to the wealth of personal and public luxuries that have nearly doubled our expected lifetimes and opened opportunities for personal choice of how to spend our time in ways undreamed by previous generations. The wealth of today's government welfare recipients, be they corporations, unions, churches, or individuals, is comparatively less that what it could be without so much government taxation, confiscation, incarceration, prohibition, and regulation of our trade. This government suppression of opportunity for property owners to decide what is in their best interest is a wealth-depriving tax on all citizens, whether they vote or not Ñ whether they think they are taxed more than they receive tax loot or not.

RWQCB staff opened the workshop with their overview of their plan for LSJR salinity and boron control. It was described as three steps of progressively greater control: coerced compliance under the threat of imminent RWQCB enforcement, RWQCB indulgences for the drainage sins of a favored few, and RWQCB termination of any noncompliance. Of course, those aren't the exact words they used. The rhetoric of government oppression is formed by carefully crafted euphemisms and Orwellian doublespeak.

Because some Environmental Protection priests decided the LSJR is an impaired water body, the RWQCB genuflects by establishing "Total Maximum Daily Loads" which it expects to allocate among groveling supplicants. This is our contemporary version of southern plantation owners laughing at starving slaves fighting over a barrel of pork scraps. It's the ugly sadism of the Spanish Inquisitors.

Why do we nurture such abhorrent tyranny with faith in government protection? Why don't we vote Libertarian?

Because government controls the forums for our discussion to silence dissenters. Government designs its facade of public involvement to silence libertarian speech. Government defames defenders of liberty with accusations of terrorism. Government terrorizes free speech with threat of prosecution for any of innumerable and unknowable prohibitions. Government suppresses trust among citizens with fear of betrayal from plea bargaining informants. Instead of trusting each other, we have become addicted to government promises.

We pay, directly and indirectly, taxes to fund government programs to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," and instead we get fooled. Government, in its ignorance of how our "general Welfare" depends on our individual liberty, is doing the best it can to keep us fooled with unending promises of protection. Otherwise, we would discover we can do a lot better without so much government.

We could discover what information our government has been collecting but not disclosing. Following other comments on the RWQCB's opening presentation, I said, "My name is D.A. Tuma. I'm the Libertarian candidate for Congressional District 3. I found out last night that the California Farm Bureau is not supporting me. But that could be expected."

"We've got a real lack of data that shows how water moves through the Delta. That's why a couple of things have been said with which I disagree. Alex [Hildebrand] seems to think that if we resumed the operation of those barriers in the South Delta that the San Joaquin River would somehow flow past the Delta export pumps. I disagree. Someone from Contra Costa Water District here seems to think that anything that goes on in the San Joaquin Valley somehow affects the diversion for Contra Costa County. As long as the Delta pumps are running, I disagree."

"I submitted a drainage operation plan to the Regional Board in '92. In '97, I asked the Board to look at it. As far as I know, you still haven't looked at it."

After the workshop, I explained to a RWQCB staffer how the data used for the graphs in the 1992 drainage operation plan indicated that slugs of salty LSJR water are flowing down the Delta-Mendota Canal. "When people see those 'hot' slugs of water coming down the Delta-Mendota, when people see that Delta-Mendota water is pumped into San Luis Reservoir, when people see that water in San Luis Reservoir is what they drink, you'll have a new constituency."

"If you want to control salt, you've got to get the San Joaquin River out of the Delta-Mendota Canal." I explained that if the LSJR is to get past the Delta export pumps, it has to cross Sacramento River water that takes 19 days to flow across the Delta to the export pumps. It is physically impossible for LSJR water to cross the Sacramento River water in the Delta, unless some kind of structural bypass is provided for such crossing. It might mix more before reaching the Delta export pumps if shunted further north by South Delta barriers, but "mixing" is not "crossing". Whether it mixes in the Delta or after it is pumped into the California Aqueduct makes no difference to Southern California water users.

Models that show the Delta mixing its waters like a washing machine are poor imitations of reality. Hourly electrical conductance data has been recorded. We should see it color coded and mapped to see how water actually flows through the Delta.

I warned that this mapping of electrical conductance data will look bad. I didn't elaborate. Government regulators are like anybody else. They have to want to listen before they can hear. They have to want to listen before they can hear even a single complaint.

But as Gerry Goffin and Carole King observed in "Smackwater Jack", "You can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand É You can't talk to a man when he don't want to understand." Likewise, it is very difficult to talk to government regulators when they are so certain of their knowledge. They don't have to listen. They don't have to understand. Indirectly, they've got government guns in their hands. And the only "gun control" being negotiated anywhere is for non-government guns.

The mapping of electrical conductance data will look bad because half of the state's population will immediately see how their drinking water could have been much better but for government substitution of numerical salinity objectives as graven images raised by environmental protection ideology in lieu of government's limited purpose to serve public safety. I suspect that is why it hasn't been done. I suspect that is why people are only shown hypothetical results of models instead of real data. I allege government fraud.

When half of the state's population sees how much better their water supply could be and what is preventing them from getting it, they will see how their welfare has been sacrificed at government's altar of wildlife welfare. They will see how government plugged the San Luis Drain, leaving San Joaquin Valley drainage no where else to go but into the drinking water supply systems fed by the Delta export pumps. They will see they have been made the butt of anal retentive obsession to give wildlife the freshest water available, no matter what cost to people. They will see their opportunity to buy the freshest water available foreclosed by a government established religion.

Californians, taking their water from the California Aqueduct, serving coastal cities from San Jose to San Diego, will see our government has failed to protect inalienable human rights and vote to alter it. Libertarians are standing by. Libertarians will let people choose how they want to spend their own earnings, which source of water supply they want to buy, and which sink of water drainage they want to buy. Libertarians will drive environmental priests out of the offices of government and let them build their own churches without government subsidies.

This was the first time I actually seemed to have the attention of government regulators long enough for them to hear some of the reasoning for a single complaint. Whether or not it was understood, whether or not it was recognized as a legitimate complaint Ñ given their attitude, "We've heard no complaints" ...only time will tell.

Attitudes influence. They censure ideas. They equivocate. They substitute sleaze for substance. They divert attention away from feared topics to something agreeable. The common attitude of government spokesmen is that central planning has drawn upon sufficient knowledge of all possible choices to justify whatever decisions are made by government. It diverts attention away from the feared reality of government stupidity. It is hubris.

When asked how science could be claimed as a basis for CALFED programs which exclude consideration of a completed San Luis Drain, the CALFED spokesman evaded the question like a blithering idiot for several minutes. The only thing I could make of his response was that he had talked long enough for us to be tired of hearing any more. This was a serious question, because the "science" of biological opinion that now rules government water management is actually the religious doctrine of environmentalism.

When allowed to speak, I rose and said, "The question has to do with 'science'. I'd like to offer a Bill Clinton response. It depends on how you define 'science'". I wonder how many recognized "It depends on how you defineÉ" as a Bill Clinton lie. I wonder how many recognized that government reports based on "science" redefined to fit religious environmental dogma can only be mendacious. The audience just sat there. I didn't see any sign of comprehension. This could have been a scene from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

In contrast to the other speakers, a district conservationist for the USDA National Resource Conservation Service, Mike McElhiney, actually offered some opinions that bore some semblance to reality. Like how agriculture is not optional. That's not exactly what he said. But at least he did acknowledge that agriculture is important for people, a concept that seems to be missing in all the other government programs. I presume it's missing because environmentalism denigrates people, and environmentalism rules our government.

I got the impression that McElhiney has actually met and listened to a few people during his career with USDA. By his choice of words, I can see how he may have actually persuaded others to work cooperatively. Like "bring peace to the process." What a concept! Simultaneously, he acknowledged a lack of peace and that peace is desirable. He didn't say how we would bring peace to the process. But the fact that he mentioned it at all deserves applause.

We are now enslaved by the established religion of emergent earth worship which looks at human agriculture as an abomination and faults people for living. Its idea of pollution prevention is people prevention. It sees pollution can be cut off at the source by cutting off the resources for people. It uses government guns to take resources for wildlife from private ownership upstream of human use and leaves the common dregs for people to fight over.

Environmentalism's single idea of source control for pollution is people control. It is the source of our conflict. Its corruption of our government is a primary source of insane government violence.

Libertarians know we can shrink government violence by shrinking government. Libertarians offer an alternative for peace among people not considered by socialist central planning. Our idea of corruption prevention is government prevention. Corruption can be cut off at the source by cutting off the resources for government. Instead of guns, we use votes to take property back from "public trust" communism and return property to private ownership so people can peacefully trade in voluntary exchange for mutual benefit and the common weal.

The libertarian idea of source control for both pollution and government corruption is government control. Government control is the intent of our Constitution. Government control is the source of our peace.

Government control by defense of our Constitution, a contract among "We the People" that all politicians have taken a solemn oath to defend, is a good and easy way to bring peace to any process. It's simple to vote for true defenders of our Constitution.

Just vote Libertarian.

D.A. Tuma
Libertarian Candidate
U.S. Representative
CA Congressional District 3

http://sacto.com/tuma2k

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